"If you want the benefits of the market, you have to actually have a market, and if you want the benefits of bitcoin, you need to actually use bitcoin."
FYI, Hoppe also discusses the tendency towards one single money globally -- see Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order, in https://www.hanshoppe.com/eepp pp 78-81 et pass.; also pp. 109, 179
That is a very underrated Hoppe essay. I referenced it extensively in my recent Bitcoin Times article, "Toward a Node World Order," which I will later republish here: https://bitcointimes.io/toward-a-node-world-order/
The term was first used as a pejorative against bitcoiners who rejected shitcoins, but even the arguments they were denouncing were often strawmen. The point being that the term itself has always been nebulous.
As a positive description for myself, I might sum it as the following: a "bitcoin maximalist" believes the market tends towards a single monetary good ("monetary maximalism"), that good will be bitcoin, and promoting or developing alternative cryptocurrencies is a strategic error, often with ethical implications as well.
yeah then I don't fit that exactly, since I disagree entirely w/ the third. That come from the activist mentality. I agree "the market tends towards a single monetary good ("monetary maximalism")," along with Mises, Hoppe, etc.; as for (b), I'd say "that good could and might well be be bitcoin, which is probably the most likely of the cryptos to suffice," But I don't agree that "promoting or developing alternative cryptocurrencies is a strategic error" as I don't give a damn about strategy--or, it's orthogonal to one's view of bitcoin and money itself.
I should not have included the third, and I see how the word "strategy" threw you off. The important distinction is the "monetary maximalism" and the belief that bitcoin has the possibility of being that money.
As for "strategy," I did not mean in an activist sense. There is no requirement for any maximalist to "do something" or act altruistically "for bitcoin." I have always agreed with your analysis of the activist mentality. (Thank you for that, by the way. It saved me a lot of time in my youth.)
What I meant by that was that if you believe (a) and (b), you are likely going to develop an analytical toolkit that can help filter BS claims, from an economic (everyone will have their own crypto token!), engineering (bitcoin block times are too slow!), or other relevant perspective (my grandma has trouble using bitcoin, therefore it's not going to be the dominant money). There are also potential real normative implications of (a) + (b).
This framework often leads to different principles and heuristics: assuming everything that isn't bitcoin is a scam, that engineering resources shouldn't be wasted on shitcoin support, that trading is just not worth the risks, etc. So the "strategy," rather than being about how they can sacrifice themselves for the good of the network, is using their knowledge about (a) + (b) + whatever else to make prudent decisions about how they might personally orient themselves towards a monetizing good that could eventually become the dominant global money. I wrote an article about this mindset in 2014 called "Everyone's a Scammer": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/everyones-a-scammer/
I can't speak for you, but I think you would be what people would generally call a "bitcoin maximalist." I hope that helps clear things up.
Oh, no, I was not thrown off. It only confirmed me for me something I'd recently started to realize. I used to think bitcoin maximalism simply meant you understood a few things:
(a) there is need for money; (b) there is thus a need for one money (c) fiat moneys suck; (d) so there is a need for a better money, which should be digital, i.e. a cryptocurrency with enough aspects to make it superior enough over commodity (and fiat) money to surpass them, and not itself to be easily surpassed (e.g .by new features); (e) there will be a tendency to replace existing fiat with a new money, and it will be one money; there is only a need for one; (f) of the 15,000 cryptos now, one of them will probably be the one that replaces the existing fiat stuff; (g) BTC is likely to be that one, simply because it is oldest, has the longest blockchain, and has the largest market share. But I do not think BTC is anything special; I see no reason why it could not have been litecoin or bitcoin cash or whatever. It's just more likely to be BTC. Moreover, (h) all these new cryptos flagging new features--it's all bullshit. Because either the basic initial ones, like BTC, are either basically good enough (meaning: it serves the function of money, and is better in most respects than, say, gold), meaning BTC can become the new monetary medium (it doesn't need to be "perfect"--if fiat is 70%, gold would be 90%; if BTC would be 98.5%, it doesn't matter if Bitcoin-Manga would be 98.6%).
given all this, some new emerging money will garner more and more inertia and the alt-currencies will be more and more scammy and shitcoiny and pointless. So my hope is that a new digital money displaces fiat, that it is decentralized, and my prediction is, - it might as well be BTC. Then the others fade away.
I assume you would not disagree with much of this.
But none of this implies "you should not try to start a new one" or all this strategy stuff. That is a wholly separate thing.
So at this point I am not sure I am a BTC maximalist or not, since I am not yet clear on what the accepted coherent definitino is.
Michael Goldstein
59 min ago
Author
I should not have included the third, and I see how the word "strategy" threw you off. The important distinction is the "monetary maximalism" and the belief that bitcoin has the possibility of being that money.
As for "strategy," I did not mean in an activist sense. There is no requirement for any maximalist to "do something" or act altruistically "for bitcoin." I have always agreed with your analysis of the activist mentality. (Thank you for that, by the way. It saved me a lot of time in my youth.)
What I meant by that was that if you believe (a) and (b), you are likely going to develop an analytical toolkit that can help filter BS claims, from an economic (everyone will have their own crypto token!), engineering (bitcoin block times are too slow!), or other relevant perspective (my grandma has trouble using bitcoin, therefore it's not going to be the dominant money). There are also potential real normative implications of (a) + (b).
This framework often leads to different principles and heuristics: assuming everything that isn't bitcoin is a scam, that engineering resources shouldn't be wasted on shitcoin support, that trading is just not worth the risks, etc. So the "strategy," rather than being about how they can sacrifice themselves for the good of the network, is using their knowledge about (a) + (b) + whatever else to make prudent decisions about how they might personally orient themselves towards a monetizing good that could eventually become the dominant global money. I wrote an article about this mindset in 2014 called "Everyone's a Scammer": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/everyones-a-scammer/
I can't speak for you, but I think you would be what people would generally call a "bitcoin maximalist." I hope that helps clear things up.
As I said at the beginning, the term itself is pretty nebulous, so there doesn't exist an accepted clear definition.
I think you make a good case as to why the arguments ought to be more formalized, so we can see what assumptions are needed to make what arguments, which arguments are stronger or weaker than we thought, etc. Giacomo Zucco had a long presentation trying to do that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRH_HepKUZA
Very good!
"If you want the benefits of the market, you have to actually have a market, and if you want the benefits of bitcoin, you need to actually use bitcoin."
Very solid!
I do prefer "passionately principled".
Also worth noting: Rothbard on Mises as A Person https://youtu.be/ZXxgVA55YaQ
Me too.
And great clip. I was watching a similar one here when gathering notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWdUIuID8ag
FYI, Hoppe also discusses the tendency towards one single money globally -- see Banking, Nation States, and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order, in https://www.hanshoppe.com/eepp pp 78-81 et pass.; also pp. 109, 179
That is a very underrated Hoppe essay. I referenced it extensively in my recent Bitcoin Times article, "Toward a Node World Order," which I will later republish here: https://bitcointimes.io/toward-a-node-world-order/
Nice, thanks! :)
What is your definition of "bitcoin maximalist"? I've heard different descriptions of it.
The term was first used as a pejorative against bitcoiners who rejected shitcoins, but even the arguments they were denouncing were often strawmen. The point being that the term itself has always been nebulous.
As a positive description for myself, I might sum it as the following: a "bitcoin maximalist" believes the market tends towards a single monetary good ("monetary maximalism"), that good will be bitcoin, and promoting or developing alternative cryptocurrencies is a strategic error, often with ethical implications as well.
So, I'm basically a "monetary maximalist." I've also elsewhere discussed "portfolio maximalism," "payments maximalism," and "platform maximalism": https://twitter.com/bitstein/status/1002646038711283713
yeah then I don't fit that exactly, since I disagree entirely w/ the third. That come from the activist mentality. I agree "the market tends towards a single monetary good ("monetary maximalism")," along with Mises, Hoppe, etc.; as for (b), I'd say "that good could and might well be be bitcoin, which is probably the most likely of the cryptos to suffice," But I don't agree that "promoting or developing alternative cryptocurrencies is a strategic error" as I don't give a damn about strategy--or, it's orthogonal to one's view of bitcoin and money itself.
I should not have included the third, and I see how the word "strategy" threw you off. The important distinction is the "monetary maximalism" and the belief that bitcoin has the possibility of being that money.
As for "strategy," I did not mean in an activist sense. There is no requirement for any maximalist to "do something" or act altruistically "for bitcoin." I have always agreed with your analysis of the activist mentality. (Thank you for that, by the way. It saved me a lot of time in my youth.)
What I meant by that was that if you believe (a) and (b), you are likely going to develop an analytical toolkit that can help filter BS claims, from an economic (everyone will have their own crypto token!), engineering (bitcoin block times are too slow!), or other relevant perspective (my grandma has trouble using bitcoin, therefore it's not going to be the dominant money). There are also potential real normative implications of (a) + (b).
This framework often leads to different principles and heuristics: assuming everything that isn't bitcoin is a scam, that engineering resources shouldn't be wasted on shitcoin support, that trading is just not worth the risks, etc. So the "strategy," rather than being about how they can sacrifice themselves for the good of the network, is using their knowledge about (a) + (b) + whatever else to make prudent decisions about how they might personally orient themselves towards a monetizing good that could eventually become the dominant global money. I wrote an article about this mindset in 2014 called "Everyone's a Scammer": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/everyones-a-scammer/
I can't speak for you, but I think you would be what people would generally call a "bitcoin maximalist." I hope that helps clear things up.
Oh, no, I was not thrown off. It only confirmed me for me something I'd recently started to realize. I used to think bitcoin maximalism simply meant you understood a few things:
(a) there is need for money; (b) there is thus a need for one money (c) fiat moneys suck; (d) so there is a need for a better money, which should be digital, i.e. a cryptocurrency with enough aspects to make it superior enough over commodity (and fiat) money to surpass them, and not itself to be easily surpassed (e.g .by new features); (e) there will be a tendency to replace existing fiat with a new money, and it will be one money; there is only a need for one; (f) of the 15,000 cryptos now, one of them will probably be the one that replaces the existing fiat stuff; (g) BTC is likely to be that one, simply because it is oldest, has the longest blockchain, and has the largest market share. But I do not think BTC is anything special; I see no reason why it could not have been litecoin or bitcoin cash or whatever. It's just more likely to be BTC. Moreover, (h) all these new cryptos flagging new features--it's all bullshit. Because either the basic initial ones, like BTC, are either basically good enough (meaning: it serves the function of money, and is better in most respects than, say, gold), meaning BTC can become the new monetary medium (it doesn't need to be "perfect"--if fiat is 70%, gold would be 90%; if BTC would be 98.5%, it doesn't matter if Bitcoin-Manga would be 98.6%).
given all this, some new emerging money will garner more and more inertia and the alt-currencies will be more and more scammy and shitcoiny and pointless. So my hope is that a new digital money displaces fiat, that it is decentralized, and my prediction is, - it might as well be BTC. Then the others fade away.
I assume you would not disagree with much of this.
But none of this implies "you should not try to start a new one" or all this strategy stuff. That is a wholly separate thing.
So at this point I am not sure I am a BTC maximalist or not, since I am not yet clear on what the accepted coherent definitino is.
Michael Goldstein
59 min ago
Author
I should not have included the third, and I see how the word "strategy" threw you off. The important distinction is the "monetary maximalism" and the belief that bitcoin has the possibility of being that money.
As for "strategy," I did not mean in an activist sense. There is no requirement for any maximalist to "do something" or act altruistically "for bitcoin." I have always agreed with your analysis of the activist mentality. (Thank you for that, by the way. It saved me a lot of time in my youth.)
What I meant by that was that if you believe (a) and (b), you are likely going to develop an analytical toolkit that can help filter BS claims, from an economic (everyone will have their own crypto token!), engineering (bitcoin block times are too slow!), or other relevant perspective (my grandma has trouble using bitcoin, therefore it's not going to be the dominant money). There are also potential real normative implications of (a) + (b).
This framework often leads to different principles and heuristics: assuming everything that isn't bitcoin is a scam, that engineering resources shouldn't be wasted on shitcoin support, that trading is just not worth the risks, etc. So the "strategy," rather than being about how they can sacrifice themselves for the good of the network, is using their knowledge about (a) + (b) + whatever else to make prudent decisions about how they might personally orient themselves towards a monetizing good that could eventually become the dominant global money. I wrote an article about this mindset in 2014 called "Everyone's a Scammer": https://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/everyones-a-scammer/
I can't speak for you, but I think you would be what people would generally call a "bitcoin maximalist." I hope that helps clear things up.
As I said at the beginning, the term itself is pretty nebulous, so there doesn't exist an accepted clear definition.
I think you make a good case as to why the arguments ought to be more formalized, so we can see what assumptions are needed to make what arguments, which arguments are stronger or weaker than we thought, etc. Giacomo Zucco had a long presentation trying to do that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRH_HepKUZA
I'll keep that in mind as I write here.
Excellent !